


Eternally Connected

by Mayarene Rose (Paradise_of_Mary_Jane)



Series: FlashVibe Week Summer 2016 [3]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Episode tag: 2x21 Runaway Dinosaur, Established Relationship, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 18:40:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7856677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paradise_of_Mary_Jane/pseuds/Mayarene%20Rose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zoom disappears in a haze of blue lightning. Cisco finds that he can’t breathe.</p><p>Killed? But no. That wasn’t possible. He hears Iris’ quiet sobs and no, it can’t possibly be real. Wasn’t he making Harry Potter references earlier? Flush with the idea that they might actually make win. And now. Now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eternally Connected

**Author's Note:**

> For Day 3 of Flashvibe week: Poly day. Not as lighthearted as the past few days but I've wanted to write a Barriscowest established relationship ever since I saw Runaway Dinosaur so... here it is!
> 
> Title is from Amit Ray.

 

Zoom disappears in a haze of blue lightning. Cisco finds that he can’t breathe.

Killed? But no. That wasn’t possible. He hears Iris’ quiet sobs and no, it can’t possibly be real. Wasn’t he making Harry Potter references earlier? Flush with the idea that they might actually make win. And now. Now.

“We lost him,” Henry says. No, Cisco thinks. No.

He moves towards to the computer and checks the readings but he can barely see anything past the tears already forming in his eyes. His hands are shaking too much to do anything useful.

Harry says something, sounding panicked and runs out the room, closely followed by Joe and Iris. Cisco barely notices.

The scans show nothing. More than nothing. Everything went perfectly, like it was supposed to. The only difference is that Barry’s gone instead of a nine month coma with superspeed.

Serves them right for trying to recreate an anomalous event. Looking back, it might have been their worst plan to date, and there are serious contenders for that title. It’s very nature means that it has less than one in a million odds of happening, how did they even think this was something that would work?

Stupid question. Because they were desperate, of course. All of them. Barry’s speed is like their last hope for defeating Zoom. They might have found another way ages ago, one not involving speed—a safer way—but they were crunching on time. No time for experiments. And—well, for Cisco anyway. He can’t speak for the others—because it was Harry giving the plan. Lots of things can be said for his not-counterpart, but his plans always, always worked, and— God, but Cisco’s head is always a mess whenever he’s in the room.

Whatever the case, the data shows nothing. If Barry’s out there, the answer isn’t on the computer screen.

 _You know what to do if you want to find the answer,_ a voice in his head that sounds too much like both Wellses say. Cisco wants to ignore it, but like anything any Harrison Wells says, it is annoyingly logical.

With tentative steps, he heads over to the device. Barry’s suit is gone, save for the front part. Burned away, probably. Because things tend to burn when you put them in an explosion. The emblem is still intact, if a bit burnt, though God knows how. Cisco reaches out with shaking fingers and prays, for the first time in his life, for that blue tinged vision.

He finds it. In the center of a blue and white storm, filled with red lightning, he finds Barry.

  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


Jesse’s still unconscious, with Harry having a vigil over her. They just sent Wally home with only minor grumbling. Iris still feels vaguely guilty about keeping him out of the loop—God knows she knows what that feels like—but they have so many other things to worry about that it just never comes up. This must be how Barry and her Dad had felt.

Cisco walks into the Cortex with Harry and envelopes Iris in an embrace. He collapses into her and Iris does her best to hold him together. She can relate; Barry’s gone and it feels like a piece of both of them has been ripped away so they cling to what they have left.

(That’s how the three of them started, isn’t it? In the chaos of their lives, they just sort of fell together and hadn’t let each other go. At a time where they all felt broken and jagged, the three of them just fit.

It feels like the Singularity all over again with Iris losing another part of herself.)

“He’s alive,” Cisco says and Iris feels her heart climb to her throat. “Barry’s alive. I saw him.”

Iris gasps quietly and hugs him tighter. If Barry’s alive then things can get better. If Barry’s alive, then things just got a whole lot easier. It feels like a thorn had been pulled away from her heart; it hurts because Barry’s still gone, but it’ll get better soon. They just need to find him.

“We’ll find him, then,” she says. “Together.”

  
  


 

  
  


  
  


  
  


Jesse’s unconcious for reasons no one can explain. They probably still have a million and one problems they’re not addressing but that one seems the most immediate. Hence, the going down to the morgue bit.

“I still can’t believe you guys have a morgue,” Iris says. Truth be told, neither could Cisco at first. Sure, Star Labs is supposed to be this really advanced scientific facility, but there is something distinctly creepy about having a room in your basement specialized to keep dead human bodies you don’t actually need. In retrospect, maybe that should have keyed him in that Wells was evil.

Barry had thought so too, when he found out. He still doesn’t like using it, necessary though it may be. But then, superheroes apparently don’t get a choice on what they use and don’t use for their superheroing. Or what happens to them for said superheroing.

“Hey.” Iris nudges his arm like she knows what he’s thinking. If he didn’t know for sure, he’d think she was a metahuman who can read minds. She takes his hand. After the day they’ve had, they could both use the contact. “Don’t give up just yet. We’ll find him.”

Cisco smiles a little, despite himself. He’s always loved that about her—one of the things, anyway—her eternal optimism. She’s like a bright ray of sunshine on a stormy day. Now Cisco’s not a typically pessimistic guy, but it is nice having someone else believe that things will turn out okay despite every evidence pointing towards the opposite.

“Yeah,” Cisco says. “We will.”

They arrive at the morgue and it’s even creepier than Cisco remembers.

“Okay, so it’s a _morgue_ morgue, but we had to keep the dead metahumans somewhere.” Another clue for evil Wells, actually. Who even wants to keep dead bodies? Couldn’t they have snuck them in other morgues and just faked the paperwork? They’ve done worse things.

“Yeah, it looks like you did more than store them.” Iris holds up a pair of surgical scissors with a raised eyebrow. And yeah, the experiments. Right.

“This didn’t tip you off that he might be secretly evil?”

“It was a crazy time. There was a lot going on.”

And the conversation goes from there. They banter back and forth and Cisco almost feels normal when the door to the morgue crashes down.

Well, shit.

Girder. Girder who’s skin turns to metal. Girder who is supposed to be dead and is confirmed to have died and is still actually blue but for some reason is not dead.

“A zombie?” he says. “For real?” Because, of course their lives actually can get weirder than it already is. Put that on the list of million and one problems that need to be addressed.

Girder screams and maybe it says something about them that they don’t run away screaming; just stand there and wait for zombie Girder to make his next move. Iris is a total badass, as always, and Cisco tries to pretend he’s as badass as she is. If Zombie Girder turns out with a desire to eat brains, this may be a serious flaw in their plan.

He doesn’t, thank God. He just heads for the nearest exit and lets out an insane scream, Walking Dead style. Neither of them feel inclined to follow.

“Didn’t see that one coming,” he says with a nervous laugh. Iris shakes her head. “Zombie Girder.”

Cisco doesn’t know at what point their lives have actually turned into a freakin’ comic book but he’d like it to stop. Like now.

  
  


  
  


  
  


“We got a new problem,” Cisco says as they run back into the Cortex. Understatement of the century, Iris thinks. “Our accelerator experiment seems to have re-animated one of the dead metas in our morgue.”

“Re-animated like brought back to life?” Dad asks.

“Life-ish. You ever seen the Walking Dead, it’s the Walking Dead but without higher brain function and with major rage issues. I’m still not sure if our brains are on the menu though.” Cisco turns to her as if in silent question.

“Focus Cisco,” she says.

“Right,” Cisco says. “Zombie. We have a zombie problem.”

“Which one?” Dad asks.

“Tony Woodward,” Iris says.

“The boy from school who turns into the metal man?” Dad asks incredously. Cisco and Iris nod.

“That’s not good Cisco,” Dad says. They nod again. Iris notices that Cisco’s practically vibrating on his spot, hands clenching and unclenching. She puts a hand on Cisco’s arm to calm him down. He’s breathing entirely too fast, though Iris really isn’t faring much better.

Zombies. God. How is this their lives?

“Cisco you’re panicking,” she says.

“There is a zombie running loose in Central City, we have an evil speedster from hell running around Central City, and to top it off, our boyfriend has apparently disappeared into one of the forces of nature!” Cisco’s voice had taken a hysterical note by the end. Iris has to admit that he has a point but that’s hardly a productive way of thinking. She pulls Cisco so that he’s facing her fully and puts a hand on his face.

“Cisco, deep breaths,” she says. “We’ll get Barry back, alright. We’ll be able to stop Tony. Just take deep breaths.”

Cisco obediently takes a few breaths, a bit deeper than the last.

“History repeats itself,” Harry says. He seems to have skipped the panicking Cisco’s going through and gone right to despair. “First as tragedy, then as farce.”

Iris gives Harry a look. Not really helping. And she doesn’t like thinking of their lives like that. Their lives are ridiculous, too fantastical and crazy to be real, but it is real, and it is their lives. She’s pretty sure that every even in history seemed like a farce when they were happening, those other people just didn’t have crazed superheroes running around their city.

They deal with their own problems the best way they can, that’s all. No point considering how tragic or ridiculous it is.

Dad says a few encouraging words that seems to have snapped Harry back from his state of despair, at least for a few hours.

“Ramon,” he says. “Get those medical records to Henry and meet me in the Breach Room in five minutes. We’ve got work to do.”

Cisco moves in a flurry, still vibrating in his own skin. Iris catches him for a quick kiss.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she says. “We’ll just try to figure out a plan to take care of Zombie Girder.”

Cisco nods and disappears.

“Now we just need to find Tony,” Dad says.

“Yeah,” Iris says. “Hopefully before he kills someone.”

  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


Harry has a plan.

It’s a good plan. Not the best, granted, but not the worst either. Cisco will use his vibes and Harry’s technology to find Barry. Simple and straightforward, like all of Team Flash’s plans. Besides, Harry is moving like he always does, like he’s going to rip apart anyone who’d dare stand in his way. It’s hard to say no to that kind of determination. Still…

Simple feedback loop, he had said. Harry may treat him like an idiot most of the time, but Cisco actually can understand what’s going to happen past the technical jargon. Harry’s going to send shocks of electricity to his brain and hope it gets Barry back. Cisco may not be Caitlin, but he knows enough about Biology to know that sending shocks of electricity to a person’s brain is not the best idea.

Remember when Cisco said about it being a good plan? Yeah, it has some flaws. Most of them involve the parts Harry suggested Cisco do, funnily enough.

“Ramon,” Harry says sharply. “Do you want to get Barry back or not?”

“Shouldn’t we wait for Iris and Joe, though,” Cisco tries. “They should be here too.”

If he’s going to possibly die of a convoluted form of electroshock therapy to try and get his boyfriend back, he thinks he should at least have his girlfriend with him.

“We have no time Ramon,” Harry says. “This is the way to bring Barry back. The only way.”

Point. Cisco hates it when Harry has a point. The last time he had a point, Barry dissolved into the speedforce. His points never bode well for Team Flash. Still, he has a point and Cisco can’t really argue with it. He throws one last dirty look before touching what’s left of the suit. The world disappears in the blue white smoke of the vortex after that.

He finds Barry, standing in the center of it.

“Barry!” he shouts. “Barry! Turn around!”

Barry turns and Cisco reaches out and ignores the throbbing in his head. Close. He’s so close. Barry’s right in front of him, for God’s sake! He just needs a little more time.

“Take my hand! Do it, take my hand!”

Barry’s hand twitches, making a move as if to reach out. Then he tilts his head as if listening to a voice only he could hear. He clenches his fist, squares his jaw and turns away.

“Barry!” Cisco calls.

Barry disappears into the vortex. Cisco tries to force himself to follow, to see where Barry’s going and drag him back to the land of the living. The throbbing in his head is becoming unbearable but Cisco ignores it. He’s not going to lose Barry, he’s not—

The vision cuts off.

Cisco barely manages to grab the metal bar before collapsing. He feels drained, like every molecule in his body is still trying to catch up with the frequency of this universe and failing really, really badly. He feels Iris’ hands are on his arm, moving tentatively. It’s a vibration he’s intimately familiar with and he savors it. Worlds better than the vibrations of the speedforce.

“Cisco,” she says. “Cisco, can you hear me?”

Cisco nods.

“I saw him. Barry, he turned to me—”

Cisco cuts himself off. For a wild moment, Cisco’d believed he’d done it. He believed that he’d managed to get Barry back. Then—If he had just lasted a bit longer, been a bit quicker.

“I’m sorry. I lost him.”

Iris wraps her arms around Cisco. He can feel her trembling slightly against him. Cisco does his best to return the hug.

“It’s not your fault,” she says. Cisco can’t quite make himself believe her like he usually does. Seeming to sense this, Iris presses a kiss to his hair.

“Not your fault,” she says again. Cisco collapses against her. He can take a second. A second where he can pretend the world isn’t ending and he’s just hugging his girlfriend, and his boyfriend is not trapped in a newly discovered multidimensional force that somehow gives people superspeed. A second where his life is nice, happy, and normal.

Just one friggin’ second.

  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


Tony’s looking for her. That makes things easy.

If Tony’s looking for her then Iris is going to give him what he wants.

(Did she say easy? Damn. Working with superheroes has really skewed her definition of the word easy.)

It’s not the best idea, granted, but it is a valid plan, in Iris’ opinion. They get Tony to follow her away from civilians and into Star Labs where Cisco and Harry will build something to stop him.

Dangerous. Check. Low chance of working. Check. Thought through in about five minutes. Check and check. Basically, it’s a Team Flash plan, which means that it has a high chance of working despite the odds saying otherwise.

Iris and her dad go back home to wait out Zombie Girder. She had been reluctant to leave Cisco alone—he’d been shaky after looking into the speedforce—but they both know that there are more things they have to worry about. Mainly a zombie metahuman. Wally is worried and confused—Iris promises to herself that she’ll talk to him about this when all of it is over—but pretty okay, all things considered.

“How are you feeling?” Dad asks Wally.

“Tired,” Wally says, still not completely comfortable with either of them. “But, fine, I guess.”

“You don’t notice anything different?” Iris’ eyebrows jump in surprise. There’s something about her Dad’s tone that seems all too familiar.

No. Just no.

Apparently, her father thinks Wally’s a metahuman. Great. Just another thing Iris needs. Another person she cares about being given a means to further their hero complex.

Her dad asks questions that he really could have worded in a better way and the conversation moves from uncomfortable to downright awkward. Dad apparently notices this, because he stops trying to talk and just downright drops the mug in his hand.

It shatters to the floor.

“Are you okay?” Wally asks. Dad opens his mouth to answer when a crash comes from the street.

Well, it looks like Tony’s found her.

Dad sends Wally upstairs—again with minor grumbling—and Iris takes her chance.

“Dad, do you really think he’s a metahuman?” she says. Dad shrugs.

“Well he got zapped by the particle accelerator and he was unconcious so it was worth a shot.”

“I gave you that mug,” Iris says. It had been a father’s day present from before she went off to college. She thought he liked that mug.

“He’s coming,” Dad says, nodding at the window.

Okay then, Iris thinks. Show time.

Iris goes out to the street to meet Tony. A few taunts here and there, and yup, Tony definitely still recognizes her. She runs—or jogs because if the Walking Dead is right about something it’s the fact that zombies are apparently really, really slow. Tony chases right after her.

It’s a weird feeling, jogging and knowing that there’s a zombie following you because he had a hard-on for you when they were alive. Basically, one of the weirdest feelings Iris thinks she’s ever going to experience. That she’s certain of.

She has to make periodic stops to make sure that Girder is keeping up with her and hasn’t run off to murder some civilians but she does make it to Star Labs eventually.

Cisco is in one of the workrooms, looking a little less pale, with a machine that was definitely not there when she left. A part of her wonders how long she’d been gone. Dad isn’t that far behind her.

“Bad news is we lured Tony back to Star Labs.”

“No, no this is good. Okay side note.” Cisco points to the machine behind him. “You might want to be on this side of the room especially if you’re wearing any jewelry or have any metal plates in your body.”

“Huh?” Iris says. What the hell had Cisco built?

Cisco goes into an explanation that goes way over Iris’ head but one word she does understand: electromagnets.

“Like wiping a hard drive,” she says. She thanks whatever divine entity may be out there that Barry made her watch so much Discovery Channel when they were kids. Cisco makes an affirmative noise.

“Okay now I can only maintain full power for a few seconds so I can’t actually turn this on until he’s in the room.”

Tony walks into the room and Cisco turns the electromagnets on and…

Nothing happens.

“Let’s get out of here?” Cisco suggests and Iris agrees wholeheartedly with that idea.

Okay, so plan A failed. Time to come up with a new one then.

  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


Plans B to G fail as well. Granted, they weren’t so much as plans as desperate, and half-cocked attempts to stay alive. Cisco never really expected them to work to begin with. Still, it was nice to have a sliver of hope.

None of that going around now.

Joe and Henry were talking about getting Barry back again and Cisco doesn’t know how to tell them that if he couldn’t get Barry back the first time, there’s a really small chance he ever will. He just can’t stay long enough to reach out.

Unless… He remembers the way Barry had looked in the speedforce. He had seen Cisco, he knows it, and his hand had twitched like he wanted to reach out but something was stopping him.

“What if we couldn’t get him back from the speedforce because he didn’t want to come back?”

It’s a shot in the dark—Cisco can’t imagine a world where Barry wouldn’t want to come back—but it’s the only shot they have. He needs to try again.

“Turn it on,” he says to Harry. “We need to try again. Any of you got a better idea?” he adds when he feels the room shake its head.

“When you look into the speedforce, can somebody else see into it, too?” Henry asks.

“As long as you’re in physical contact with Ramon while he’s vibing, then, yes,” Harry says.

“Let me do that,” Henry says. “I can get Barry to come back.”

Cisco’s eyes flicker to Iris to see that she’s looking at him as well. He gives her a small nod. Not to undermine Henry—he’s Barry’s dad and seems like a really cool person—but he feels—no, knows—that it’s supposed to be the two of them.

“No,” Iris says. “Let me do it. Please.”

Henry nods—he and Barry had tried running an experiment once on whether or not it’s actually impossible to say no to Iris. Iris had laughed herself silly when she found out about it—and Iris moves to stand beside him. She clasps Cisco’s hand. They’ll find Barry. Together.

  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


“Barry,” Iris says. The three of them are in a vortex of blue and white smoke with red lightning. Barry turns to them, wearing the Flash costume. His face instantly lights up when he sees them, so much love in his eyes that it almost hurts to look at. There’s also something like disappointment in his eyes but it’s gone before Iris can be sure it was real. Iris reaches a hand out. “Come home to us. Come home to us, Barry.”

Barry turns back and says words that Iris can’t hear. She reaches out further, her other hand tight around Cisco’s. Come on Barry, she thinks. Come home to us. You have so much to come back to.

  
Barry turns back to them and smiles. He takes her hand. They pull him back.

It’s hard. The speedforce seems to be fighting with every power it has to keep Barry where he is but that doesn’t matter. Iris promised Cisco that they’ll get Barry back and they will. Nothing in any universe would be able to stop them.

They pull him back together and maybe that was what they needed to do in the first place.

Barry comes out of the speedforce running, like everything he does, and Cisco and Iris all but collapse against him. Iris savors everything: Barry’s scent, his warmth, the way the three of them seem to fit so easily together, like they were made for each other. Cisco pulls away first, looking reluctant to do so. He says,

“I’m so glad your alive, because we’re about to die.”

“What?”

And they explain about Tony. It’s still crazy but that’s the world they live in. Iris doesn’t doubt that they’ll manage to stop him. They always stop the villain in the end. Besides, Barry’s back and he’s always been a lucky charm for all of them.

Barry’s here and Iris is here and that’s all Iris needs. Everything else will work itself out.

  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


“Hey Cisco?”

Cisco hums. They’re at Cisco’s place because he has the biggest couch and they wanted to spend some time together. The team has collectively decided to ignore all of their problems for one night. Zombie Girder’s dead and Barry’s back. That’s enough problems for a lifetime, in Cisco’s opinion, but he’ll settle for one night.

Statistically speaking, he knows that he’s not a particularly lucky guy, what with all the kidnapping, powers, and general terrible state of his life at the moment, not even talking about the dying twice in an alternate timelines thing. But sitting pressed between his two favorite people in the world, it’s hard to feel like he’s not the luckiest person in the world.

“When Iris came to me in the sppedforce, you weren’t there?” Barry makes it sound like a question.

“I wasn’t?” Cisco raises an eyebrow. Huh. He had to admit, that was pretty interesting. He had thought he was, given the fact that that he was the one vibing. That’s something he’ll have to look into later. “I thought I was.”

“What?” Iris asks. “What do you mean not there? He was the one vibing.”

“Only you were there,” he tells Iris. “Cisco wasn’t. I thought it was because…” He trails off, shifting uncomfortably, which, totally unacceptable. Not tonight. Tonight is their night for acting like a normal couple, or triad in their case. Cisco snuggles closer to him to keep him where he was. Barry lets him.

“You know I would have come back for you too, right?” Barry says. “When you came the first time, I mean. I wanted to but the speedforce said I wouldn’t have my powers if I did, and I couldn’t, not without—”

“Hey man,” Cisco interrupts because Barry sounds like it physically pains him to say the words; not because he doesn’t mean them, more like the idea that Cisco might not know. “It’s cool. You still had some stuff you needed to do. Wrong place, wrong time, not enough people.”

“No,” Barry says forcefully. “You’re important. I was coming back for both of you.” Iris’ arm tightens around Cisco as if to drive the point home.

Honestly, Cisco hadn’t even thought about that at the time. He’d been thinking about a lot of things: pushing the grief that that threatened to overcome him at the thought of Barry being dead to the very back of his mind, hundreds of futile back-up plans to defeat zombie Girder, the constant terror that came with fighting Zoom, but never that. He has apparently developed enough self-esteem for that.

“I know,” he says. He pulls Barry down for kiss then moves to Iris when they pull away. He figures that after the day they’ve had, they deserve that.

Zoom is still out there bringing evil metahumans from another world with him, he still has Caitlin, and the world might be ending really soon, but just for tonight, with Barry and Iris at his side, Cisco can feel lucky.

  
  


 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Say hi on [Tumblr](https://daisyetcisco.tumblr.com)!


End file.
